| 25 March 2010
I haven't really had a chance to mention this yet, but the good folks here at Bloguin recently started a a pretty cool little site called Bloguin Outsider. Outsider is a general sports blog written by an all-star lineup of Bloguin bloggers, including Joe Tetrault from TetraultVision, Gene Zarnick from Favre Dollar Footlongs, and Aaron Torres from Aaron Torres Sports (all great sites).
I'll be a regular contributor over at Outsider as well, so you can expect to see a post from me over there two or three times a month. My first post went live this morning and, even though it's not baseball related, I think everyone here will enjoy it. The post is called "NASA Should Look to NASCAR". It suggests that one way NASA can go about inspiring public interest in itself and science & math in general is by spending some of its $20 billion budget on sponsoring a NASCAR car.
Now, I'm the first to admit that I know very little about NASCAR. It's just never been my thing. But I do have a pretty good idea about what makes it so appealing: it's all about cool, complex machines going really fast in a sometimes dangerous setting. Space travel, then, is NASCAR taken to the extreme - riding massive rockets into space at 25,000 mph is hardly safe. Anyone who enjoys NASCAR at it's most primal level should, in theory, be interested in space travel.And I don't mean that on just a superficial level, either. For my friends and family who enjoy NASCAR, one of its biggest allures is it's mechanical nature. It's a natural point of interest for the mechanically-inclined - complex machines going really fast. If NASA were to sponsor a NASCAR team, it might inspire these mechanically-minded fans to pursue engineering or aeronautical careers. With NASCAR's large and growing fan base, this could prove to be a non-inconsequential increase in the science population. The more scientists in the world, the better chance for NASA's survival.
To read the rest, please head on over to Bloguin Outsider. I think you'll like it (and if you don't, feel free to tell me why I'm wrong).
